#but i have the most hope now for a higemaru minor arc?

[hamliet]

the second qs Squad , what their purpose in the story ?

A great question. I think Higemaru is meant to reflect Urie, Hsiao Saiko, and Aura Mutsuki–however, it hasn’t been properly elaborated within the story at this point, with the exception of Aura. Their arcs are intertwined with their respective Q; hence I’m hoping for more Hsiao but if Saiko’s arc is just her sleeping I really don’t know.

I would also like to see Higemaru, someone whose family legacy is to help people, realize that the CCG is the furthest thing from helping around the time that Urie decides that this isn’t the legacy he wants to continue.

[linkspooky]

Omake + Meta = Ometa

It’s time once again to over analyze the omake. Jokes? What are those.

All of the omake cited in this meta are translated by @kenkamishiro​ and can be found on this tag [x]. 

Mutsuki’s Power Level

The first omake to have anything potentially of substance is the confrontation between Shinsanpei and Urie. A confrontation which also results in a return of Urie 400%, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The new details are the tidbits that are shown in Shinsanpei and Urie’s brief exchange of words.

Let’s cover that and more under the cut: 

The first is that Urie mistakes Mutsuki for Aura at first, which supports the notion that Aura at this moment exists as a foil to Mutsuki which is the reason the two are so often being partnered up.

Shinsanpei mirrors Mutsuki’s own transformation from a timid personality to one that revels in violence. He also shares the same eye motife, as seen above either one or both of Shinsanpei’s eyes are always covered only revealing themselves when he becomes especially bloodthirsty. Shinsanpei’s mirroring of Mutsuki though is to a much more minor extent and for lesser reasoning, something the omake seems to acknowledge even with Higemaru calling him an “Aunt-Con”. Perhaps by foiling Mutsuki to a character whose motivations are much more shallow and petty, as Aura herself does not want Shinsanpei to avenge her, it also highlights who despite the anger that Mutsuki justifyingly feels at the world for abandoning him and the suffering he’s endured, his current acts are in a way just as selfish as Shinsanpei’s. 

There’s also two more pieces of foreshadowing, Shinsanpei hints that Mutsuki is actually much more powerful than Urie currently is and somebody who needs to be competed with. This was also hinted as far back as the Donato fight, where it was implied that Mutsuki had a much higher rc cell count already then Urie who was hitting dangerous levels. 

As for how he attained these levels, it’s implied as far back as 100 that Mutsuki has been killing and hunting humans. Perhaps even eating them in service of strengthening his kagune. Which would also make sense with what Shinsanpei implied next, that he too like Urie could reach the same level of kagune formation when he framed out. Something that probably would only be possible if Shinsanpei began to eat human, or even ghoul meat alongside Mutsuki. His humiliating loss to Kaneki Ken could have served as proper motivator to do so. 

The Return of Urie 400%

Urie 400% has always been foreshadowing for Urie’s inevitable transformation into a kakuja. If the fact that it already happened is not enough proof to convince, I’ve already written a meta on it here [x].

As I’ve highlighted though, this return of the Urie 400% is even more monstrous than the previous one. It has features such as giant protrusions from the shoulders, and multiple eyes. The first has been shown to be a trait of Urie’s framing out, while the second is a trait of many Kakuja’s before Urie, Eto, Tatara, and Kurona to name examples. 

Thematically it makes sense for Urie to frame out again too, as previously he was saved from facing any real narrative consequence for his own actions by Saiko. In other words he was “saved from the web.” However despite literally endangering the mission and attacking his own comrades something that was eluded to be punishable by death if a Quinx were to lose control of themselves, Urie was promoted. 

A promotion that he did not in any way earn considering that he literally broke the one biggest rule of the Quinx. Not only that but there is a great deal of fallout one would presume from Urie smashing his frames entirely and becoming a full ghoul, something that the audience has not witnessed. There is no mention of what Urie is now eating, or if he’s being treated the same way Sasaki was, or if he’s truly become a full ghoul despite all hints that he indeed has. Urie has not even begun to sympathize ghouls, only being moved to action because of his feelings towards humans, Yoriko and Bujin in particular. The obvious conclusion then is that Urie’s character arc is not done yet but rather Saiko served as to Urie, what every character has been doing to ignore the consequences of their action in this arc. That is to deeply engage with personal relationships instead of looking at one’s self. 

The consequence for this might be Urie being set up as what he hates the most.

Urie being placed in a life or death situation with no Quincke against Furuta and two of the strongest ghouls in the series may force him to frame out and if he has truly been eating ghoul meat instead of human meat in order to sustain himself now that human food is impossible to eat, he might even develop a full Kakuja. In that case Furuta would have all the evidence he needs to frame the murders of Kuroiwa and others on Urie himself, and place him on the execution block. After all, Furuta put a special focus on witnesses when he made his move against them. Furuta’s word in that situation would count far more than Urie’s.

The suggestion in the omake that Shinsanpei himself might also be capable of framing out the way that Urie did is also a deadly suggestion for the future of the Q’s. After all when Furuta makes mention of his dragon, what shows up is a picture of each of the three first generation Q’s still alive.

The Q’s project was also originally credited as Tsuneyoshi’s idea. Perhaps Furuta might even use Urie’s framing out as a power play to gain control of the remaining first and second generation Q’s in order to form his dragon, or even worse he might expunge them from the CCG entirely and declare them a threat to safety which would cash in Saiko’s own foreshadowing laden words “I’ll become a terrorist” in a way she never would have wanted to come to fruition.

Hanbee’s Death and Suzuya’s Changing Sides

Nakarai misunderstands in the omake and says that he would probably kill Hanbee if the fighting were to end. This joke is a part of a long running series of gags where Hanbee is injured by a member of Suzuya squad, or a member makes a light reference to hurting him. In fact Hanbee has been shown stabbed in the head too many times in the omake to make it a mere coincidence.

This also makes sense as a narrative consequence to Suzuya. He said himself that he might just become a ghoul were the conflict to end, he’s already thinking of switching sides. The thing that currently keeps him in place is the fleeting hope that Shinohara come back, and the idea that he has to act in Shinohara’s memory.

The same way that Urie has not learned to see Ghouls as people, Suzuya has not learned to sustain loss in any kind of way. All he can do is hope for the increasingly impossible return of Shinohara, the first human connection he has. Even when surrounded by four people literally devoted to his existence, Suzuya cannot stop his pining for Shinohara because he cannot feel and move on from that loss. 

The Suzuya Squad also, act as a sort of buffer that prevents Juuzou from really facing consequence. They protected him during the Kurona fight even though Kurona was a case of reaping what he sewed by killing her sister all those years ago and having yet to show any remorse. When Uta played withhis feelings for Shinohara, it was Abara still who snapped Juuzou out of it immediately rather than Juuzou facing those feelings and snapping himself out.

If the bubble were to be removed than Juuzou would grow, and grow he must if he’s a character that exists within a narrative. 

Child’s Play

This entire omake seems to be hinting at the fact that 24 year old Furuta, 23 year old Kaneki are about the same general maturity level of thirteen year old Ayato when he first said that quote.

It’s a further hint that both kings are really just children playing a game. Something that was also hinted at in the previous omake too when Kaneki turned crucial information into a game of 20 questions.

Kaneki also refers to himself as a child when conversing with Furuta in the past, Furuta calls him his baby faced boss when facing off in the cochlea with Rotten follow, and Kaneki’s shadow image of himself, the incnarnation of his memories when he was still Haise was that of a child. Furuta at the same time was born at a leap day, and refers to himself as being only six years old in his birthday poem. 

A Dummy, That’s what I am

Finally, I think it’s important here that the omake shows Yoriko’s general obliviousness towards ghouls.

She refers to them as “those monsters”. This is the same character whose best friend is a ghoul and who is currently being executed in her name. The fact that she thinks of him falling off a building is a twofold reference, one that Kuroiwa literally was pushed off of a building and survived when Eto landed as the one eyed owl. Revenge probably for what Kuroiwa himself did to her when he was only fourteen, as Eto references falling in her flashback. The second is her musing that a ghoul might not be able to survive a fall from that height is a reference again to both Eto and Kanae who did fall off a particularly large building, though one survived and one did not. 

It’s probably not anything particularly meaningful but it’s an interesting case of parallelism at least. Iwao also says something that is important towards his and Bujin’s characterization. 

“We’re both quite simple people” both Bujin and Kuroiwa are shown to be to the book to the point of it being a flaw. Their own actions against ghouls may een be for reasons as simple as Yoriko’s, that they simply are oblivious to the fact that they might feel human emotions. The same way Yoriko  describes them offhandedly as “those monsters” as if she barely knows about them, even though she spent a good portion of her life with one.

It speaks again of the privilege that humans have to be above this sort of conflict. Iwao and Bujin to this point have never needed to relate to ghouls, or treat the CCG as anything other than a 9 to 5 job they participated in. The same for Yoriko who married a ghoul investigator while knowing nothing about ghouls and inadvertantly led him to her best friend a ghoul herself. Yoriko’s fatal flaw in this case is her own obliviousness. Perhaps she did not deserve to be executed by that fact or exploited the way Furuta did, but Yoriko herself even scolds herself for not noticing. 

For buying into the simple illusion that Touka was perfectly happy eating her food, the easy lie that they were happy all along in their simple friendship. Had Yoriko bothered to notice, Touka would not have been all alone in her pain.